Post navigation

Military

Sitting in the surgeon’s shop, I am working on socks while we discuss all of our procedures and documents. If I was willing to take orders, there would be a line out the door.

Last evening we were entertained by the Jazz Group, who set up near the two DFACs. Pretty up front about their agenda (the more they get invited to perform while downrange, the fewer scut details they will have) to make sure that everyone knows that they are around and love to provide music.
The moon was almost full glory. Here we don’t get the second full moon of the month tonight – it shows full tonite at 0140 according to the Space Websites. As a result, for Europe, the Blue Moon will fall near the end of the month.

Socks

And then there are the current socks. They are knit in STR. The particular color is Fire on the Mountain in medium weight.

Military

Picture in your mind a long open bay of sleeping space with a door in each end that opens to the outside. There are overhead lights and windows on the outer wall that open. The inner wall is shared with the other side of the buildings.

In this room are metal bunk beds along both sides witth the feet pointing toward the center isle. Since there are not 48 women, in fact not even 24, everyone gets a bunk on which to sleep, putting their gear on either the bunk above or below.

Unfortunately, it appears that most of the women sharing this location with me are GenXers and really young. Nothing against young knitters, most of you have manners and considerations for others. But for this crew who is sharing space the idea is not to disturb others, especially if they want to sleep. So TVs, Stereos without headphones are not a good idea. Neither are private phone calls in the building (unless you don’t care if everyone else hears them, and trust me – none of the rest of us want to hear you). Nor do we want to be woken up before 0600 if we don’t have to be anywhere for a few hours. You can tell most of these kids have not been deployed or they would not be doing this stuff.

I am contemplating posting house rules covering lights out, noise, and neatness. As the senior occupant, I am reserving my right to be crabby.

Socks

I have this lovely skein of Fire on the Mountain from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. I started Vinnland from The AnitCraft but the pattern disappeared in the bright colors. So I am back to a basic 4/1 rib. I am going to figure out tomorrow how to manage to get to the library so that I can upload a couple of pictures.

Military

There is an old saying – If it is not raining, it is not training. Well, this morning we had it in spades. 1AD is doing their deployment prep. Part of that is a rather large exercise out in the field. Lucky me, I get to play for a couple of weeks.
I am not going to Iraq, only to bay billeting and a secured working area for the next couple of weeks. I know a lot of the people, many have worked for me at various assignments over the years. There are beds in buildings rather than tents, there is a DFAC open twice a day, with MREs only for lunch. I can get on the computer, but pictures will be limited.
The 300+ km to here was in the pouring rain, complete with construction zones and lots of trucks.

Knitting

To make my day, the SGT at the Heidelberg Mail Room let me bail out my packages prior to hitting the road. It would be fair to say that they were all for me. And contained either audio books or yarn. I have more than enough to keep my happy for a couple of weeks.

I will try to keep you posted. Most importantly, I am looking forward to new June patterns from a couple of KALs.
-Holly

The rain comes down softly. Not salty of tears but fresh to wash the grief of those standing silent. With respect and memory, the pebbles are placed.

Yesterday I placed money in a contribution container. Sitting at a table with their poppies, two of the few remaining veterans of the Second World War reminded me of how much wars have cost. How little things have changed in the last few years, except for the innocents who are dying.

Looking through my files, it seems like this day means something when I am deployed but passes almost unnoticed when I am in garrison. The details of ordinary life taking away critical meaning, reflection, and honor.

Life is too precious to spend it carelessly. I am honored to serve, but I see the cost in lives and injuries as we remain mired in the middle of an inevitable civil war. As I contemplate my friends downrange, I can but pray for their safe return.

In the morning I head to the field for a couple of weeks. 1AD will roll this fall. Doing what I can to help them be ready and worry about what is in store.

May wisdom be granted to those who lead, while those elected face the responsibilities oftoday. For the lives lost, torn assunder, and the families that remain.

Sitting here, I have not much energy for knitting. Last night I was time zone whacked and up at 0230. Now, I have no clue as to why my son was up at the same time. Could it possibly be that he slept the day away (without cleaning up) and is not tired at night?

This morning it was strawberries, our ground cover. Not to eat, they have no flavor, but seem so cheerful.
Totally out of control – it is her ball, trust me.

Knitting

What I really had to do was choose and wind sock yarn from the stash to take with to Graf. I am planning on knitting socks in the evening. Rumor has it that there are even mattresses on the beds along with lights and heat. Now, if I can just find an internet connection I will be all set and you will hear from me! In any case, I now have to figure out, other than the sockapalooza (only thing on the needles) which patterns to bring along. Suggestions welcome!

Socks

Another Monkey – out of Opal Herbsmelodie. That makes three socks from one skein of yarn.

We flew over the Canadian Rockies, landed in Montreal and changed planes for Frankfurt. (We will skip the part about the flight delay from Vancouver & Montreal, the late arrival in Frankfurt and the delayed train from Frankfurt. Why bother?) What a lovely feeling, getting off the train in Heidelberg, getting home, dropping off the suitcase on the way in the door.

Home

We shall also gloss over what the house looked like. I don’t even want to talk about the dining room where there is a table somewhere buried under all the flotsam. Or the living room where the teens have apparently been living in order to watch the only TV in the house. They are on Pfingstferien. They tell me they are entitled to stay up late and sleep in.

Actually not my problem as I have to head to the field in the morning.

Even less my problem as DH and I blasted back out the door to pick out bathroom tile and plumbing fixtures. In less than two hours we found tub, tiles, sink and toilet. I am hoping that our bathroom is ripped out while I am in the field and Noah’s room is already partly deconstructed. Those went to our plumbing upstairs.

Socks

The Fluted Banisters are done. The colorway is Shades of Teal knit out of Monarch Yarn. I adore this yarn, it is springy and highly twisted. It shows stitch definition extremely well. I have only tried the sport weight on 2,5-2,75mm needles where it is wonderful.

Which only leaves the sockapalooza and a scrap monkey on the needles! The kids did not pick up the mail this week. I could cry, considering this was yarn that I wanted to take along to the field.

-Holly

Oh – the Vancouver Public Library is a beautiful building – here is a bit more of it.

The trip back home takes a long time. Several audio books, a few pictures, lots of sock knitting and hours upon hours. Departing Vancouver at 0850, we are chasing time zones. About five hours again in the air before Toronto, and three hours for time zones. Leaving Canada, add almost nine hours, and six more hours on the clock.

That means that it will be over 24 hours on the clock before we get off the plane in Frankfurt to face the train ride home.

Bed? Not a chance. The bath and tile places are only open until 1300. If I want a say about our new bathroom, Saturday is my only opportunity.

Arches

From my foot tour, an out of the ordinary public building.
Headphones back on – Roberts and Patterson still to go.
-Holly

Travel

After the conference finished around 1300 today, it was time to visit yarn stores. The DH who was returning from that dangerous place, San Francisco, was tied up in Immigration/Customs for almost two hours. No idea why the lines were crawling but something is going to have to improve before the Winter Olympics or there are going to be thousands of really unhappy people.

But I digress. After visiting the first store on Main Street, I headed off on foot up 20th in the direction of Kingsway. And this is what I saw adorning the fence tops along my route. Not on the cross streets, and not a block over. Something must have infected this street with a need for creature guardians.

Please note, I spared you the other four dwarves who were in a lot more shadow. Along with pineapples, more lions and other unidentifiable crowning elements. Snow White knew better than to be out in public.

Knitting

Yarn Shops. Birkeland Bros Wool Ltd. is at 3573 Main Street. Not only do they have a wide variety of Canadian and Scandinavian yarns on hand, they have fibers and spinning wheels. And then there is the 100 year old huge carder still in the shop. You can see it from the front, the back and up close and personal. I would not put my fingers in there.
I also stopped at Burnaby Knitworks. She was having a storewide sale. A wide variety of yarns, mostly good solid choices were on the shelves. If I had anything planned (other than socks), I could have easily stocked up on Peer Gynt or Lannett. But I was good and didn’t buy anything.

Socks

At 0530 this morning I settled on Fluted Banister for my Barrister. The colour way is called Shades of Teal from Fly*Dyer if I am reading the label correctly. The sock is at that wonderful limp dick stage that is only obvious is you are knitting top down socks. Some times you really don’t want to wave it around at this point, It can really startle the uninitiated.

Our flight is fairly early in the morning. Vancouver -> Toronto -> Frankfurt.

Travel

The weather was beautiful today. Rather than go to an optional, non CME, lecture I hiked up Howe to Chapters (book store) where I found a copy of Vancouver by Davis. Yes, there were several other coffee table books, but his lecture was so excellent that I wanted the stories that went along with the pictures. It was really hard to go back inside, out of the sunshine after lunch. I also had collected a few pictures that were unique from an outsider perspective.

I didn’t expect brightly coloured taxis. It looks like someone scattered a box of Smarties.

Or a city that very carefully labels the nearest wall in impressive script to make the fire hydrant easier to find.

Not to mention my proof that the Convention Center looks like a cruise ship or that there is what could be a UFO landed on top of the Harbour Centre.

Knitting

In the slightly more sane world of sock knitting – I have Monkeys! Knit in sport weight LimeNViolet, 64 stitches on 2,5 mm needles they just sped along. I have to admit that the colour combination is obnoxious, but so are monkeys. That made it a great match.

Travel

Other than someone from Switzerland calling at what I think was 0100 in the morning, I actually got some sleep. This bodes well for my functioning here, but not so for the return to Europe at the end of the week.

I spent the day at the conference, occasionally appreciating the turning globe.

All the lectures were decent, some of the speakers absolutely outstanding. I can’t figure out the Brit Military attitude toward Leish as presented by the speaker today, but then catching a preventable disease does not win you a free ticket home in the US military.

Wandering downtown at the end of the day I enjoyed the contrast between a few old buildings, and reflections in some of the new. Unfortunately the majority of the architecture is on the high-rise cement with windows version. Functional, but really really boring.

Ah yes, I bought professional books today. It is always hard for me to tell whether or not I want a book by reading about it in a catalog or on a webpage. Now, if it is fiction and under 7$, I might take a chance. Medical texts, on the other hand, like all professional books can easily run $40-275 a book. I am unlikely to guess at those prices. Since the three major book publishers had reps, I was able to sort through and decide how to best upgrade my references. This is important, money spent on medical texts is money not spent on yarn or knitting books. Let us get our priorities straight.

Knitting

It is now Monkey, from Knitty. The Opal matches the Horcrux I finished yesterday. The second pair was started on the way in this morning out of colorway LimenViolet in sport weight from Lisa Souza

From there I think it is the Fluted Barrister out of Shades of Teal from Monarch.

I guess I am keeping this up while I am on the road because that I how I started in the first place: with an email distro list out to family and friends since March of 1998. I still have that running as well, but automated out of Yahoo Groups to make it easy on myself. But most of crew is not at all interested in knitting. And posting pictures is a lot of work out my email account.

The convention center in Vancouver is right on the Harbour. In fact, the Coral Princess is tied up at dock right next door. With all the private balconies on the upper deck, it makes me want to just get on board, sit with my feet up right out from my room and knit my way up the inland water ways to the coast.

The architecture of the Convention Center itself is built like a ship. There may be sails, but the rest is pure cruise ship. It is wonderful. The views from the upper deck, a plaque with the history of the Two Sisters, and the inside Totem. Too bad I had to spend most of the day inside, not being able to see the sunshine that finally arrived.

With all but one speaker today being absolutely excellent, I really enjoyed the meeting.

Knitting

The Horcrux pattern is an auto pilot knit once past the upper portion. I have the pair now finished and Monkey started. In the same yarn because the DH really liked the yarn and I should knit something for him. But it is really busy. And the truth is I forgot the ball of yarn that I wanted. Tomorrow, LimenViolet for Monkeys.

Travel

Being awake really early is not at all surprising, so we will just skip that.

Besides getting registered for the conference and visiting a few souvenir shops, what was important was seeing a bit of Vancouver. This is the Pacific North West. It rains. Not to be amazed that it was raining here. And occasionally coming down hard enough to get us wet, even with the new umbrella we purchased having not remembered to bring one along. I did bring a rain jacket. But putting it on makes me feel like a wimp. So instead it stays in my bag while I get damp.

But anyway….

We drove around Stanley Park which is at the very end of the peninsula that has the “old city.” (This is Old in a Northern American Continent kind of old. – not European old.) Just for your general interest, Vancouver believes in charging for parking, a lot. At least I think $2/hour for street parking or pull over parking in a park is a excessive. But it does make money for the city and prevent commuters from using it as a parking lot.

Then there is the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology with an incredible collection of First Nation Artefacts. The most prominent of which are house totems as well as other Salish and Haida works, both old and contemporary.
Since the purpose of being in town was to attend CISTM10, it seemed to make sense to attend the opening of the conference (along with the included reception). Because of unexpected road construction not there this morning, we missed the Bagpipers. But heard some short, very entertaining greetings and saw the Chinese Dragon Dancers.
The only issue for me was the number of people crowding around the snack tables. It was much nicer watching from the balcony above than being in the press.

Knitting

In the middle (between registration and museum), we had headed to Grey’s Point. I checked out Urban Yarns. Other than carrying a complete like of Fleece Artist, they had some other lines, all higher end and good quality. The store is quite small, but good use is made of the space. Their sock yarns were limited to Fleece Artist, Lorna’s Laces, Koigu, and three different colorways of Regia. Not lines, mind you, but three individual color patterns. But the women working there were lovely. I did pick up some Seawool, but the guy colours were pretty limited.

According to the clock on this system, it is 0752 on the 21st. Since it is not that where I am, it explains why I feel so tired.

Travel

The train was at 0605. And there is no way you should believe that I got to bed prior to 0230. That makes for a short night.

It is over 8 hours to Montreal from Frankfurt, a scramble through customs, luggage re-check and a run to the gate to make the 5+ hour flight to Vancouver. Air Canada is nice, polite and acting American as far as service on the in-country flights. I am still not used to paying for food on flights. My bags of trail mix went a long way to keeping the DH and I fed for that leg.

With a window seat on the first leg, I kept my self entertained with socks, the camera, and the MP3 player.

For that second leg, middle seat, the MP3 player was running down (did I mention that there was actually a USB port in the panel in front of me which worked for chargeing?) and getting a crick in my neck from difting off in weird position.

Socks

Half way down the first sock – the Lava Spiral out of Lisa Souza’s Earth Birth were finished by the time we got off the plane in Montreal except for the minor issue of closing the toes and dealing with the strings.

This gave me time, before I wiped out completely to start Horcrux (6 Sock KAL) out of Opal Herbst Melodie.

Audio Books

MP3 players are great, that is once you finally get to the menu that lets you cancel “shuffle.” I mean really, how do you list to a book with a device that insists that all your tracks be scrambled. I intensely dislike not knowing what comes next anyway, so it is not an option for which I see any use. Given the time frame, I was able to listen through two of the three books in Nora Robert’s Key Trilogy and start on the third. Dead Run and D is for Dead Beat did not get ripped completely. Argh!

Meeting registration is in the morning and the opening ceremonies and reception are tomorrow night. Time zones are striking.

The day before I go anywhere it seems like everything falls apart. At work there are meetings, crabby people, and emergency deadlines. I suddenly remember a number of items that really do have to be completed prior to going out the door. I won’t bother to mention the email box that keeps filling up as fast as I emptied it out. Since I will be gone over a week, this is not a small consideration.

And we will not discuss the idiots on the road. Passing streams of lumbering trucks grinding their way up Grünstadt Hill there is always someone who does not believe in speed cameras until after they go flashing past and get blitzed. This is followed by the sudden slamming of breaks and accident near misses. Did I mention this is also a construction zone? And that the fog was so dense this morning than 60 km was pushing it?

No crash, so I suppose that the fool in the Mercedes thinks that there was no foul.

Socks

I started a new sock. I was looking at RPM, and then looked at the ball of yarn. I really didn’t want to have to count. I also like Bohus. This pair will be a spiral variation. I simply purled when ever either the yellow or a transition orange was in the row below.

Packing

The most important part of the packing has been completed. I have identified and made center pull balls out of Opal, Fleece Artists, Monarch, Lisa Souza, and Ellen’s Half Pint Farm to take along.

I also have knitting needles, tape measure, patterns. Camera and charging cords.
Clothes? Oh, yes, I probably should pack some of those, shouldn’t I? Not as important as yarn.

Audio Books

Rescuing an MP3 player back from the teens, I still have to load books on CD. I think I am going with Agatha Christies’ The Mystery of the Spanish Chest and Return to Baghdad, PJ Tracey’s Dead Run, and Richard North Patterson’s Exile. It is similar to yarn. By far better to have too many books loaded in case one of them is just not what you want to hear.

Arches

Knitting

Totally and completely amazing. The only sock on needles is the sockapalooza. The grasshoppers are complete. Not knit by the pattern completely (one sock is a sampler of various 2tog/yo combinations, with the second a bit closer to the real pattern.Yarn= STR Silky in colorway “Walking on the Wild Tide”Pattern= variation on Knee High to a Grasshopper, the April Rocking Sock Club Pattern. The key change was knitting the back of the sock in 1×1 ribbing. It may not be as pretty as the mesh, but the socks are staying up after a couple of hours. All the yarn overs were done front to back, which made the p2tog a snap.Needles = 2,5 Colonial Rosewood dps over 56 stitches.

The yarn was lovely to knit, I will have to see how it wears. I find foot length much harder to estimate with toe up socks., perhaps in part because I am never in the situation where I can try them on in process. And moving stitches from my beloved dps to something else and back is a pain. Since I have never run out of sock yarn, I have proved that I can knit toe-up and will go back to knitting my top down socks. There is a lot of room for personal preference.

So what do I do for simpler project when Sockapalooza kntting is too much? Something out of More Sensational Knits? Certainly I should knit a fingering weight pair of Hocrux for 6Sox KAL and March Madness Monkeys for my spongemonkeys (be warned, the song is horrible) as part of the running family joke since they started singing “We like the moon” at World Con [LA CON IV] last summer.

Sockapalooz4

Only a couple more rows tonight. I have to decide whether I am going to take them along to Vancouver, or just go with simple patterns on the trip. The pattern, which I created by pulling various twisted patterns from a couple volumes of Strickmuster aus dem Steirischen Ennstal, has two panels which are quite complicated with side panels that are less so. It takes concentration. Unlike the twisted stitch patterns that wind up in most popular pattern books, these panels include a lot of knit/purl swaps. Since I wanted to make my pal something that was going to be unique, I think I have succeeded, unless I go insane in the process.

Audio Books

Finished Dead Wrong by J A Jance tonight. In plenty of time to return it prior to leaving town. Now to decide what to load onto the MP3 player for the trip. My cassette recorder is not cooperating. That might be good in that it takes up a whole lot more space.

Before I forget – is there anyone out there from Vancouver? We head that way on Saturday [Conference time] and I am hoping to get in a couple of yarn stores or see if anyone is willing to have me treat them to tea or coffee.

Sockapalooza

Blowing up the pattern with the xerox helped. Should I admit my eyes are getting older? Or that knitting sometimes is neither the right focal length for either my distance or the bifocal portion of my lenses? Unlike stockinette – this was more like 10 rows in a couple of hours. Might have something to do with a dropped stitch or two, but I would rather not talk about the fun of chasing a lost pearlpurl down a number of rows. This is a full repeat on the front: which means a double repeat on the back and x6 on the side panels. I think it looks ok.

Knitting

Isn’t it such fun? It was a prize from her blog and I was a random winner. I now who is going to be marking the center of Cottonwood when I get it back on the needles.

The Blue and Grey Stripes are done.
And I am making progress on the Grasshopper, only the leg left on the second sock. So I need to choose my next project so that I am not completely insane. A pair of Monkey’s perhaps?

To be honest, this was one of those days at work best put out of mind as soon as possible. Long meeting in the morning followed by commute with car (I am so glad the CD player was willing to play today without skips, fits, stops and starts) followed by work, acrimonious meeting and more work. I didn’t get in the door at home until after 2000.

So you can imagine what this did to my knitting. I brought home my Sockapalooza pattern, and turned the heel on the stockinette sock.

That is it. The grasshopper is only six rows farther up the gusset.

I took pictures of both, but felt too stupid to post them. Six rows? Give me a break, the progress is not visible from the last update pix. And a standard heel turn – you have all seen that before.

The best I can offer is the yarn basket (which seems to be the home for cords and chocolate as well as knitting paraphenalia) and the dog, ever patient as she waits for me to drop food within her reach.

Moving right along, you don’t want to hear about my morning of meeting (that is right – 3+ hours long) anymore than I want to think about it. Nor do you want to know that I then had to hitch a ride to Landstuhl for a 30 minute meeting late in the day.

And how did I get home, you might wonder. Assuming that I successfully made it home tonight without wheels.

Well, I gained knitting time. I had a chance to work on the grasshoppers for part of the midday blast down the autobahn. At least till I got to the part where I needed the pattern which was in the trunk. Should have suffered through being uncomfortable in the front seat of the sports car with large bag under my legs than have 20 minutes unable to knit. I will know better next time.
No dummy, I am taking the xx07 after the hour S-1 as it passes through Landstuhl on its way across four states to arrive at Osterburken. I was sitting there in time to see the new Trans-regio pull in. And see that orange sign? It represents a remarkable change for Germany.

A No Smoking sign. In an outdoor public place. The train stations are now to be smoke free.

One hour, 42 minutes later, the S-1 passes through Heidelberg. Allowing for boarding and exiting, I figured a good 95 minutes of knitting at the minium. Executing complicated patterns requires concentration – I elected train knitting. Plain, ordinary stockinette can be absolutely wonderful.

Socks

I finished up the first sock of this pair quite a bit earler, the second was cast on after boarding – and this is 16 cm of sock cuff wrapped up as we pulled into Heidelberg. Really not bad for what turned out to be 100 minutes of knitting time.

I should be thrilled to accomplish even 20% of that speed on my sockapalooza. There I made absolutely no progress: I forgot the yarn at home and the pattern at work. Phooey.

Books

I have both the India Ink and Yasmine Galenorn cozies just returned from the eldest to read. All these sock projects are really interferring with my reading. I have gone from a book/day normally down to maybe 2 a week.

By rumour, today is Mother’s Day. We had absolutely nothing scheduled. Once the basic errands were finished (getting some groceries in the house) the rest of the day was mine to sit and play. The cheese cake was baked by the eldest just for me. The dog just decided to stay with me in case I was willing to share my food [not].

Sockapalooza4

If you think these socks are for you – you might be right. But then again, with so many of us involved, the odds are not high. I don’t know if my “victim” has ever been here to look. Not posting would take a lot of fun out of the process.

After working out as much as I wanted with my sample yarn – I discovered the following: using 2,0 mm needles made too stiff a fabric with a gauge around 4 sitches per cm. Plus if I want to stay with this gauge, I will have to expand the number of stitches. Hitting the stash, I found a skein of J-Knits in colorway Newbury Port. which I had purchased from theYarnGrove.. The best I can describe it is as a semi-solid falling between rose and lilac. I have been to my pal’s blog. She has pink, she has purple, she has red socks on the pages. I think this color is going to work out better than my previous choice.

Starting on 2,25 mm needles, I went with a long tail cast on and knit a cuff in twisted rib that I think is long enough. It measures 4 cm. Which led me to a bit of research and a curiosity – how long a cuff is long enough? Is it a standard length, which seems to be common for most German patterns, or is it more reasonable to be proprotional either to the length or the pattern? I have noticed that I seem to knit about the same length cuff, and it is related to how much cuff is needed to hold up the sock. And that means that it may very with the receipient. What do you think?
After 13 rounds the patterns are coming clear. I am quite pleased with how well the colour, stitch definition and pattern combination came together. The front and the back. I can see right now that this is not mindless knitting. The side panel repeats are only four rows long, but the back pattern is 13 and the front is 15 for the center and 8 for the side. Once I am completely done, I should properly write out this pattern in case anyone else is interested. Working from xeroxed sheets cut and taped together is fun [I have some shore front property in the desert].

Knitting

The second grasshopper is progressing. It is my break knitting when my eyes are too crossed from the Trautenfels Tulip. Going toe up again (my consession to the pattern) I even decided to do the mesh stitch. We will not talk about the one stitch that jumped off the needle and made a break for freedom down four rows before I could blink. Rather than reknit, I picked it up as best I could and kept on going. Since the other sock became a stitch sampler, one irregular hole in the mesh is not going to bother me.

Audio, Visual, etc

The winner of the Eurovsion was Marija from Serbia. And if you have any interest in listening – all the songs can be heard over the internet by following the links to each of the participants pages and hitting audio or video.

In what is a rare event for us, we are sitting in the living room and watching the Eurovision finals. If you are not familiar with Eurovision, let me give you a quick explanation: each country through popular vote from TV broadcasted competition choses a music performance to enter the International competition. The entries vary from solo jazz singers, through weird home language performances to totally wacked out rock groups. The winner is decided through popular International vote (phone and SMS). This whole thing is accomplished through TV Programs. Started in 1956 – it predates American Idol by decades.

Some of the entries are totally insane – Ukraine metal group in mylar costumes – UK sappy pop in flight attendants uniforms – incredible drumming from Bulgaria. 24 in all. An amazing number of gorgeous women’s voices and performances this year. Moldova, Slovakia, and Finland come to mind.

Of course, evey act was followed by commentary out of the teens plus the DH.

It interferred with my knitting.

Military

Of course, most of my evening had already been blown by the Annual AMEDD Ball. George got off the train from Frankfurt in time to put on his tux and we headed to the Village Pavillion.
The color guards were in the tradition of wearing uniforms from across the wars.
[You can fill in the middle here – opening remarks, welcomes, buffet dinner, various award announcements and presentations, closing remarks]
Once the colors were retired, there was supposed to be dancing. After talking to a few people, we hung it and came home.

Knitting

Ready to bind off the first Grasshopper, with notes taken on changes for the second. Still going toe up, and I like this heel version. Once I picked up the trick of doing the yarn over from front to back, I might just mesh the second sock. What is also making a difference is that I am making the back side of the leg in 1×1 ribbing so that it does not sag.

Sockapalooza4

I have found the componets for my pattern, knit a twisted stitch cuff and am five rows down the sock. Because of the bright red, it is hard to see at this point. Mostly I am making sure this is doable, checking gauge, and keeping this pair for myself. I will get daylight shots tomorrow.
Since there are 2000 participants out there, even if my pal stops by this blog, I have no reason to suspect that she would ever guess these are for her.
—
The votes are now being announced. It is a hoot, Serbia, Ukraine, and Russia are in the lead. What can I say? Next year this program will be hosted out of somewhere in the former Soviet Block. Should I stay awake, or crash? Humm, knit is best.
-Holly